


Milkshakes at Joe's

by bobbsnark



Category: Shadowhunters
Genre: Clizzy - Freeform, F/F, M/M, Malec, brother sister bonding, i guess, i kind of love the idea of clizzy?, in which izzy comes out to alec, wlw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 13:55:31
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17408144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bobbsnark/pseuds/bobbsnark
Summary: They sit in companionable silence for a while, until the side of his mouth curls up in an amused smile as he stares down into his choc-chip shake, swirling the straw around, and Izzy, intrigued, asks what’s so funny. “I’m just thinking of how mom’s going to react when she finds out.”“To which part, the fact that I’m dating the daughter of a genocidal megalomaniac, or that the number of straight children she raised is rapidly decreasing?”Alec is still cackling through his milkshake moustache when the waitress comes to take her tip.





	Milkshakes at Joe's

**Author's Note:**

> Wrote this quite quickly and I'm too lazy to edit. In which Izzy comes out to her brother over milkshakes, I suppose.

Alec gets a text late one night, whilst he’s comfortably curled up on the sofa, buried under a pile of blankets at Magnus’ apartment, where they’ve fallen asleep sprawled together in a jumble whilst watching a film. He sees his phone light up and vibrate on the coffee table, emitting a light glow in the dark apartment, illuminated only by the moonlight which filters in through the building’s wide windows. It’s from his sister, and its short and to the point, simply reading _Meet me at Joe’s_. Alec’s heart skips a beat as he reads the words and their implication, but he swallows any nervousness he has, knowing that what the words really means is that his sister needs him. It’s been a while since either of them have needed to go there together. For anyone else he would have chucked his phone aside and curled closer to his boyfriend and fallen comfortably back asleep. It’s a cold night, but Alec reluctantly and gently pulls his arm from underneath where Magnus has fallen asleep on him, and the mountain of blankets they’ve been sprawled under, ignoring the tingling as his arm comes back to life.  
  
Magnus makes a muffled sound as Alec pulls himself off of the couch, which he makes out as “Ev’ry thing okay?”  
  
“Yeah. I’ve just got to head out for a bit. Stay there, I’ll see you later.” He places a gentle kiss on his boyfriend’s cheek, grabs his coat, and hesitates at the door before deciding it’s too cold to go out without a beanie and a pair of gloves, and grabs those, too.  
  
He decides to walk the short distance, despite the cold, because Google Maps tells him that Joe’s is only a fifteen-minute walk from the apartment. A gentle snowfall begins as he walks, dusting the sidewalks of New York City in a sparkling covering of white powder. When he arrives, it’s 1:30am, and he spots the bright, colourful neon sign declaring Joe’s Diner open 24/7 from all the way down the street. He peaks through the windows to see if Izzy’s already arrived, but only sees an old, bearded man wearing a trucker hat nursing a hot chocolate and a waffle topped with copious amounts of cream, seated in one of the side booths. He etches a warming rune onto his forearm and stomps his boots on the sidewalks as he waits for her to make an appearance.  
  
Joe’s Diner is the place where he used to bring her when they were both kids, when the confines of the Institute got too much for the both of them, when they needed to escape from the hushed arguments of their parents, when they were actually around. It’s where they came to feel like normal kids, with no demons to fight but their own. Eventually it became the place they went to when either of them had something they needed to talk about or something important they had to tell the other. But it had been a while since either of them had been there, not since Clary and Valentine and becoming leader of the Institute, or even his parent’s divorce. There had been no time. He wonders whether this is a reflection on whether he’s been there for his sister, but his wondering is cut short when he sees Izzy turn the corner onto the street, snowflakes landing and melting on her dark hair.  
  
Her face lights up when she sees him, which alleviates some of the worries in Alec’s heart. Nothing too much to worry about, then, he thinks. When she reaches him, she loops an arm through his and drags him through the door with a “C’mon, it’s _freezing_ out here!”

Izzy makes her way up to the counter and makes the order for both of them whilst he finds them a booth. She orders a choc chip milkshake for him and a strawberry one for her, just like always.

They talk about trivial things for a while, laughing and joking about stories they’d heard from Jace about his time in Alicante. He’d decided to visit his grandmother and taken the opportunity to learn about his family. He’d been gone for a month now, and from the texts he’d sent Alec, he seemed happier and more content than he’d ever been. He’d broken up with Clary a few months ago, a decision which had been mutual. The whole brother and sister thing had really put a damper on their relationship, even after the truth was revealed that Valentine had been lying the whole time. Both of them had found it too difficult to get over the weirdness of the mind games Valentine had played on them, and had realized that it was too late for them to try for a healthy relationship with all that baggage behind them, and so the split had been a relief for both of them. 

When Alec is half-way finished with his milkshake, they're sat in silence for a few moments before Izzy starts speaking again, whilst Alec is attempting to scoop ice-cream into his mouth with a straw. 

“Clary and I are dating.”

Alec blinks. The straw stops halfway to his mouth and the ice-cream plunks back into the glass. “Oh. Okay. You happy?”

He wonders what he’d have liked to hear, had he had the courage early enough to take his sister out and come out to her over milkshakes. Instead he’d come out all at once to the shadowhunter community by leaving his bride-to-be at the altar on their wedding day and by kissing a Downworlder mage in front of everyone to top it off. He thinks that might have also been the day he’d come out to himself. And he was supposed to be the more sensible sibling.

“Very happy.” She smiles, a genuine, beaming smile which lights up her green eyes. It’s one he hasn’t seen on her face for a while. It makes him smile, too.

“I’m glad you could tell me. I wish I could have-” _told you like this, too._

She puts a hand on his, and squeezes. “It’s okay. I know. It’s not easy, but Clary and I had you and Magnus to look up to and that made it easier, for us and a lot of other people, too. Plus, I already knew,” she winked. Alec's throat closes up. An image of the the young Shadowhunter who'd taken him aside a couple of weeks ago and thanked him on behalf of himself and his boyfriend, for showing them that it was okay to be who they were in this world, pops into his head. They sit in companionable silence for a while, until the side of his mouth curls up in an amused smile as he stares down into his choc-chip shake, swirling the straw around, and Izzy, intrigued, asks what’s so funny. “I’m just thinking of how mom’s going to react when she finds out.” 

“To which part, the fact that I’m dating the daughter of a genocidal megalomaniac, or that the number of straight children she raised is rapidly decreasing?”

Alec is still cackling through his milkshake moustache when the waitress comes to take her tip. The waitress side-eyes Alec, who was currently laughing like a madman, before hurrying off with the bill. 

When he gets home he notices that Magnus has at some point moved from the couch to the double bed in his bedroom. As he undresses he tells Magnus about his conversation with Izzy. 

 “Oh, yeah, knew that.”

 “Oh?” he asks, curious.

“Seen the way they look each other.”

"And?", Alec presses.

“Same way I look at you,” Magnus throws back, voice muffled by his pillow.

The answer takes Alec by surprise, and he pauses before replying. "Damn. That was smooth," he chuckles, picking up a cushion to loveably throw at his boyfriend’s head, before climbing back into bed with him with a content smile on his face.

 


End file.
